I set up XAMPP 1.7.2 and Mediawiki. When I opened my web browser to look at Mediawiki, it says:

MediaWiki 1.16.0Please set up the wiki first.

I clicked on the link. Now it says:

PHP 5.3.1 is not compatible with MediaWiki due to a bug involving reference parameters to __call. Upgrade to PHP 5.3.2 or higher, or downgrade to PHP 5.3.0 to fix this. ABORTING (see http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=50394 for details)